Satisfaction

Without exception, everyone has left God attempting to be satisfied somewhere else. We've placed our affection and delight in created things rather than in the Creator (Romans 1:21-25).

Problem: Creation cannot truly satisfy.

God intentionally made us with natural desires to hunger, to thirst, to enjoy, and to feel. God made us with needs that are without end. We have physical, spiritual, and emotional needs today that will subsist tomorrow, through next year, and till the end of our days. God's creative intent within giving us needs reveals the immeasurable depth of the human soul. You can go to the greatest of lengths to satisfy your needs, but you will never find yourself outrunning them. They are constant, unrelenting, and unforgiving. But they are also good. Needs are not inherently evil.

Truth: God made you to be satisfied.

Our hearts will always hunger and thirst for more than what creation can offer. In order to be truly satisfied, the object of our satisfaction must have eternal capacity, worth, and benevolence. Anything else will leave us hanging and wanting. Created things were never meant to satisfy us by themselves. God made us with needs, but He also intends for us to be satisfied. A God who would make us with needs without providing an object with the potential to satisfy them is not an abundant, trustworthy, and benevolent God.

Solution: God revealed Himself within creation as the object of our satisfaction.

Jesus came to redeem our worship and to restore our hearts to the only source that can give true rest, peace, and satisfaction. In order for God to win us back, He became a part of His own creation. God emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, living and breathing among us (Philippians 2). The Creator became creation to win back our worship. While we sought satisfaction in the world hopelessly, God purposed to make His entrance into that same world as a quiet, compassionate, honorable, and sacrificial King that would win us back to Him. This lovingkindness and invitation to relationship with God wields the authority to save and re-center our worship back upon the only true and worthy source of satisfaction. The God of endless capacity, worth, and benevolence became like us in every way to reveal a life of satisfaction in God we could never receive from the world.

whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

— John 4:14

Our desires and how we fulfill them shape our perception of purpose in life. God has wired us to where our desires will create and sustain our purpose naturally. If we desire Him, we will not only be satisfied, but we will at the same time be aligned with the purpose for which we were made: to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

— Westminster Catechism

Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

— Revelation 4:11

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.